A number of states and cities have passed predictive scheduling laws that mandate how employers can schedule employees. These laws are also commonly referred to as restrictive or advanced scheduling laws. Vermont has not passed a full-fledged predictive scheduling law. However, the Green Mountain State has passed a workplace regulation that is closely related to predictive scheduling laws and sometimes referred to as a lighter version of it.

Vermont’s “Flexible Working Arrangements” law is a piece of legislation that has been in place since 2014. The main focus of the bill is to protect employees from retaliation and enable them to request certain scheduling changes from their employers. The law does not obligate employers grant their requests, but it does establish a “framework for meaningful workplace dialogue.”

A Quick Look At Flexible Working Arrangements

According to the law, a “flexible working arrangement” is an intermediate or long-term schedule change made to the employee’s regular schedule. Changes that might fall under this category in include:

Changes in the number of hours or days worked

Changes in the time the employee arrives or departs

A work-from-home situation

A job-sharing arrangement

Employees interested in discussing the arrangement with their employers are invited to make the request in writing or verbally. The employer is then required to discuss that proposal in “good faith” and the discussion can take place in person or over the telephone.

The law then requires that employer to provide the employee with a notice of their decision in the same format as the initial request. If the employee requested the change in writing, then the employer must respond in writing.

Additionally, the law recommends a number of considerations that the employer should take into account:

The monetary cost from making any adjustment

The effect on employee morale

The effect on the ability to meet consumer demand

The ability or inability to reorganize work among existing staff

The ability or inability to hire additional staff

Any detrimental impact on business quality

An insufficient amount of work during the periods the employee requests

Any planned structural changes to the business

Vermont and New Hampshire have very similar flexible scheduling bills in play and employers should take the hint: this is a trend that is pushing towards more regulation, not less. It’s important that businesses prepare for what will likely be a renewed effort to pass predictive scheduling laws in the northeast. With New York joining cities like San Francisco and Seattle, it wouldn’t be shocking to find Burlington jumping into the mix. These laws are a compliance nightmare and businesses that don’t partner with the right technology firm will be sure to suffer fines and penalties.

A number of states and cities have passed predictive scheduling laws that mandate how employers can schedule employees. These laws are also commonly referred to as restrictive or advanced scheduling laws. Vermont has not passed a full-fledged predictive scheduling law. However, the Green Mountain State has passed a workplace regulation that is closely related to predictive scheduling laws and sometimes referred to as a lighter version of it.

Vermont’s “Flexible Working Arrangements” law is a piece of legislation that has been in place since 2014. The main focus of the bill is to protect employees from retaliation and enable them to request certain scheduling changes from their employers. The law does not obligate employers grant their requests, but it does establish a “framework for meaningful workplace dialogue.”

A Quick Look At Flexible Working Arrangements

According to the law, a “flexible working arrangement” is an intermediate or long-term schedule change made to the employee’s regular schedule. Changes that might fall under this category in include:

Changes in the number of hours or days worked

Changes in the time the employee arrives or departs

A work-from-home situation

A job-sharing arrangement

Employees interested in discussing the arrangement with their employers are invited to make the request in writing or verbally. The employer is then required to discuss that proposal in “good faith” and the discussion can take place in person or over the telephone.

The law then requires that employer to provide the employee with a notice of their decision in the same format as the initial request. If the employee requested the change in writing, then the employer must respond in writing.

Additionally, the law recommends a number of considerations that the employer should take into account:

The monetary cost from making any adjustment

The effect on employee morale

The effect on the ability to meet consumer demand

The ability or inability to reorganize work among existing staff

The ability or inability to hire additional staff

Any detrimental impact on business quality

An insufficient amount of work during the periods the employee requests

Any planned structural changes to the business

Vermont and New Hampshire have very similar flexible scheduling bills in play and employers should take the hint: this is a trend that is pushing towards more regulation, not less. It’s important that businesses prepare for what will likely be a renewed effort to pass predictive scheduling laws in the northeast. With New York joining cities like San Francisco and Seattle, it wouldn’t be shocking to find Burlington jumping into the mix. These laws are a compliance nightmare and businesses that don’t partner with the right technology firm will be sure to suffer fines and penalties.

If you’re operating a business in California, compliance isn’t something that can be taken lightly. This was a costly lesson Victoria’s Secret learned when they agreed to pay out $12 million to settle claims that they had underpaid employees that were working on-call shifts.

While California does provide some labor protections for employees that work on-call shifts, it has yet to adopt a state-wide predictive scheduling law. That hasn’t stopped three major cities in the Golden State from enacting their own municipal ordinances with similar mandates.

Which Businesses Are Affected
The San Francisco law applies to retail establishments that operate in at least 40 locations worldwide and employ 20 or more people in San Francisco.

Employers should first figure out whether they fall under the category of a retail establishment. The law is written so that it applies to as many businesses as possible and employers are considered operating a retail establishment if they have at least two of the following characteristics: a trademark, uniform apparel, standardized signage, standardized interior decor, or a standardized array of merchandise. In this sense, it even applies to many fast food restaurants.

Requirements
Covered employers must meet a number of standard obligations:

Work Estimates And Advanced Notice: New employees must be given an initial estimate of the number of hours they can expect to work and the estimate should include the potential days and range of hours that they could be working on. This estimate should be given when the employee is hired or when any considerable change occurs. Additionally, employers must provide notice of work schedules two weeks in advance of the next shift.

Compensation For Changes: Employers must pay employees if a change is made to their schedules after it is posted. If the change is made less than 7 days (but more than 24 hours) before the shift begins, employers must provide employees with an additional hour worth of pay. If less than 24 hours notice is given to an employee, then employers must pay them 2 hours worth of pay if they are working a shift that is less than 4 hours long or 4 hours of pay if the shift is longer than 4 hours.

On-Call Shifts: If an employee is scheduled for an on-call shift but not ordered to come into work, the employer must pay them 2 hours worth of wages for every shift of 4 hours or less that they were on standby for, and 4 hours worth of wages for every shift longer than 4 hours.

Record Keeping: Employers are obligated to maintain schedule and payroll records for at least three years and provide these records to San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement upon request.

Fines And Remediation: Should San Francisco find cause to conduct an investigation into a business and subsequently discover that the business violated the laws, “the Agency may also order the violating Employer to pay to the City an amount that does not exceed its enforcement costs.”

Emeryville

As of July 1, 2017, Emeryville’s predictive scheduling law has been regulating the relationship between employee and employer. The legislation, which is called the Fair Workweek Ordinance, just ended its soft roll-out period, and businesses will now being to receive fines for violations. In a sense, the law greatly resembles the San Francisco ordinance.

Which Businesses Are Affected:
Emeryville retail and food service businesses that employ at least 56 people worldwide are covered under the law. Companies that have a collective bargaining agreement with a union are, however, exempt.

Requirements
Covered employers must meet a number of standard obligations:

Work Estimates And Advanced Notice: New employees must be given an initial good faith estimate of the number of hours they can expect to work. This estimate should be given when the employee is hired. Additionally, employers must provide notice of work schedules two weeks in advance of the first shift on that schedule.

Hiring Practices: Before hiring new employees, employers must prioritize making part-time employees full-time.

Record Keeping: Employers must retain records for 3 years.

Compensation: If an employer makes changes to a schedule after the 14 day advance notice period but with more than 24 hours notice, they’ll only have to pay the impacted employee 1 hour worth of wages. If the change is made in less than 24 hours from when that employee is supposed to report in, employers will have to pay him or her for 4 hours worth of labor.

Fines: A $500 fine is assessed for any violation of the city laws. These violations include a failure to: update work schedules in advance, provide additional pay for schedule changes, offer work to existing employees before hiring new staff, or maintain records for 3 years.

San Jose
The San Jose restrictive scheduling ordinance, Opportunity To Work, is a lot thinner than the previously mentioned legislation. It passed via voter initiative during the November 2016 election and went into effect on March 13, 2017. The ordinance requires businesses to offer additional hours to part-time workers before hiring anyone full-time.

Best Practices To Prepare And Comply With Predictive Scheduling laws

Business owners that continue to manually track and input schedules on the same old spreadsheet aren’t just relying on their ability to understand these compliance regulations, they’re gambling on the chance that they will never make a mistake. All it takes is a few unexpected sick days and an over-scheduling crisis to set you back potentially thousands of dollars in fines. That’s why it is imperative that employers find the right technology partner with the tools they need to streamline their compliance.

With these sorts of rules, it’s important for employers and employees to be able to communicate in real time, and cloud-based technology is the most efficient way to do so. With the right platform, employers should be able to offer extra shifts to the appropriate employees and employees that foresee a scheduling conflict should be able to alert their employer well in advance.

All records related to these regulations must be held for no less than three years and be available for any compliance investigations. With this in mind, you’ll also want tools that enable you to produce custom reports that meet the demands of any situation.

With all of these requirements, predictive scheduling laws can sound like a headache. Thankfully, the most advanced, intuitive, and cost-effective program on the market has all of the features you’ll need in one suite.

If you’re operating a business in California, compliance isn’t something that can be taken lightly. This was a costly lesson Victoria’s Secret learned when they agreed to pay out $12 million to settle claims that they had underpaid employees that were working on-call shifts.

While California does provide some labor protections for employees that work on-call shifts, it has yet to adopt a state-wide predictive scheduling law. That hasn’t stopped three major cities in the Golden State from enacting their own municipal ordinances with similar mandates.

Which Businesses Are Affected
The San Francisco law applies to retail establishments that operate in at least 40 locations worldwide and employ 20 or more people in San Francisco.

Employers should first figure out whether they fall under the category of a retail establishment. The law is written so that it applies to as many businesses as possible and employers are considered operating a retail establishment if they have at least two of the following characteristics: a trademark, uniform apparel, standardized signage, standardized interior decor, or a standardized array of merchandise. In this sense, it even applies to many fast food restaurants.

Requirements
Covered employers must meet a number of standard obligations:

Work Estimates And Advanced Notice: New employees must be given an initial estimate of the number of hours they can expect to work and the estimate should include the potential days and range of hours that they could be working on. This estimate should be given when the employee is hired or when any considerable change occurs. Additionally, employers must provide notice of work schedules two weeks in advance of the next shift.

Compensation For Changes: Employers must pay employees if a change is made to their schedules after it is posted. If the change is made less than 7 days (but more than 24 hours) before the shift begins, employers must provide employees with an additional hour worth of pay. If less than 24 hours notice is given to an employee, then employers must pay them 2 hours worth of pay if they are working a shift that is less than 4 hours long or 4 hours of pay if the shift is longer than 4 hours.

On-Call Shifts: If an employee is scheduled for an on-call shift but not ordered to come into work, the employer must pay them 2 hours worth of wages for every shift of 4 hours or less that they were on standby for, and 4 hours worth of wages for every shift longer than 4 hours.

Record Keeping: Employers are obligated to maintain schedule and payroll records for at least three years and provide these records to San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement upon request.

Fines And Remediation: Should San Francisco find cause to conduct an investigation into a business and subsequently discover that the business violated the laws, “the Agency may also order the violating Employer to pay to the City an amount that does not exceed its enforcement costs.”

Emeryville

As of July 1, 2017, Emeryville’s predictive scheduling law has been regulating the relationship between employee and employer. The legislation, which is called the Fair Workweek Ordinance, just ended its soft roll-out period, and businesses will now being to receive fines for violations. In a sense, the law greatly resembles the San Francisco ordinance.

Which Businesses Are Affected:
Emeryville retail and food service businesses that employ at least 56 people worldwide are covered under the law. Companies that have a collective bargaining agreement with a union are, however, exempt.

Requirements
Covered employers must meet a number of standard obligations:

Work Estimates And Advanced Notice: New employees must be given an initial good faith estimate of the number of hours they can expect to work. This estimate should be given when the employee is hired. Additionally, employers must provide notice of work schedules two weeks in advance of the first shift on that schedule.

Hiring Practices: Before hiring new employees, employers must prioritize making part-time employees full-time.

Record Keeping: Employers must retain records for 3 years.

Compensation: If an employer makes changes to a schedule after the 14 day advance notice period but with more than 24 hours notice, they’ll only have to pay the impacted employee 1 hour worth of wages. If the change is made in less than 24 hours from when that employee is supposed to report in, employers will have to pay him or her for 4 hours worth of labor.

Fines: A $500 fine is assessed for any violation of the city laws. These violations include a failure to: update work schedules in advance, provide additional pay for schedule changes, offer work to existing employees before hiring new staff, or maintain records for 3 years.

San Jose
The San Jose restrictive scheduling ordinance, Opportunity To Work, is a lot thinner than the previously mentioned legislation. It passed via voter initiative during the November 2016 election and went into effect on March 13, 2017. The ordinance requires businesses to offer additional hours to part-time workers before hiring anyone full-time.

Best Practices To Prepare And Comply With Predictive Scheduling laws

Business owners that continue to manually track and input schedules on the same old spreadsheet aren’t just relying on their ability to understand these compliance regulations, they’re gambling on the chance that they will never make a mistake. All it takes is a few unexpected sick days and an over-scheduling crisis to set you back potentially thousands of dollars in fines. That’s why it is imperative that employers find the right technology partner with the tools they need to streamline their compliance.

With these sorts of rules, it’s important for employers and employees to be able to communicate in real time, and cloud-based technology is the most efficient way to do so. With the right platform, employers should be able to offer extra shifts to the appropriate employees and employees that foresee a scheduling conflict should be able to alert their employer well in advance.

All records related to these regulations must be held for no less than three years and be available for any compliance investigations. With this in mind, you’ll also want tools that enable you to produce custom reports that meet the demands of any situation.

With all of these requirements, predictive scheduling laws can sound like a headache. Thankfully, the most advanced, intuitive, and cost-effective program on the market has all of the features you’ll need in one suite.

While municipalities throughout the country have passed city ordinances, Oregon is the first state to adopt predictive scheduling requirements. With the signing of Senate Bill 828, employers state-wide must prepare for the substantial changes that are soon to take effect.

What Businesses Are Affected?

The new law will impact employers with 500 or more employees worldwide and counts subsidiaries and their parent companies as a single employer. This broad definition ensures that the largest number of employers will be impacted by the changes and, furthering this goal, the hospitality industry includes casino operators.

What Does The Law Require?

Most of the bill’s provisions are activated on July 1, 2018, but some regulations will become more burdensome at a later date. For example, employers will be initially obligated to provide at least 7 days of advance notice of workshifts to an employee. By 2020, however, business will be forced to give employees 14 days of advance notice. For every schedule change made within this one (and eventually two) week window, employers are obligated to pay employees one hour worth of wages to the employee in question. For employees working in a state with one of the highest minimum wages in the country, this could become a bounty–for employers this could become a dangerous burden.

Employers are encouraged to avoid scheduling employees within a 10 hour “rest period” of their last shift, and employers that choose to schedule employees during this period must pay them 1.5 times their regular rate of pay. Businesses must also receive written and voluntary consent in order to schedule employees in this manner.

Like many other predictive scheduling laws, the Oregon legislation requires employers to provide a good-faith estimate of the number of hours an employee can expect to work in a given period. In this case, that period is one month. Employers must also explain their voluntary on-call list procedures and cover the employee’s tentative work schedule. This estimate must be given to all new employees at the time they are hired.

Unlike some other examples, the Oregon version of predictive scheduling does provide employers with some leeway in the area of on-call shift. Businesses can ask employees if they would like to be on a “voluntary standby list” and if an employee consents, the employer is exempt from a number of potential scheduling penalties. Additionally, employees hired to fulfill an administrative position such as a secretary are exempt from the requirements.

Fines And Remediation

Employers are subject to penalties for every violation of the law’s provisions and record-keeping is an important part of compliance. Oversight is handled by the Commissioner of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries who has the discretionary authority to levy fines up to $1,000 per violation.

How Employers Should Prepare

It’s imperative that employers covered by this legislation begin to prepare now. They should begin by updating their hiring policies and retrain staff associated with human resources and payroll. Additionally, it would be prudent to begin drafting the necessary good faith estimate templates as well as policies guiding their standby list. Most importantly, employers should reconsider their approach to documenting and recording work schedules. The most convenient and efficient method of doing so would be to use a tool like Deputy. With Deputy, employers would be able to manage their standby list, update their employees’ schedules, and have an electronic record of every important interaction and payroll disbursement.

Predictive scheduling is no small matter to adjust to, but if you prepare now and partner with the right employee management system, you can make the transition as seamless as possible.

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